


Tremble Before My Mighty Genius

by meh_guh



Series: Tony the Polyglot and his Sneaky Sniper Boyfriend [4]
Category: Marvel
Genre: College Years, Gen, Prequel, Prompt Fill, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meh_guh/pseuds/meh_guh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony designs his own language at MIT, for <i>reasons<i></i></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tremble Before My Mighty Genius

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo.... my headcanon for Tony is that he has at least one normal doctorate earned at a ridiculously young age, and like 20 honourary ones for repeated revolutionising of the field of Engineering. And another of Aer's prompts birthed this, so thank you honey! (and let's just pretend that Tony was born in 1975, even though that makes Howard, like, 60 when Tony was born. Shh, mathematics: ignore them)

**1994, MIT ******

The screen was moving. Tony glared, and braced his hands on the desk. Aha, OK; it was _Tony _swaying, not the computer. He supposed that made more sense.__

'OK,' he hadn't heard the door opening, but it must've, because Rhodey hadn't been here the last time Tony checked. 'I'm destroying your Dr Pepper supply.'

Tony swivelled his chair around, and it was so fun he spun a few more times. Rhodey's gigantic hands clamped his knees on the fifth circle, but that was OK. Tony was starting to feel a little wonky.

'If I wanted to stay awake,' Tony pointed out, jabbing a finger at Rhodey's face. 'I can easily find cocaine or something even if you destroy all caffeine on campus. Which you shouldn't.'

Rhodey's face scrunched up adorably, and Tony leant forward to poke at some of the more hilarious wrinkles.

'Stop that,' Rhodey batted his hand away. 'Tony, you're babbling nonsense. It's time you went to bed.'

'Sleep is for the weak,' Tony scoffed, and now that he thought about it, that hadn't been English coming out of his mouth. He tried again, focusing on the words. 'Not need is to make with the orders.'

Rhodey grinned. 'Yeah, all the right words, but you sound like Yoda now.'

Tony folded his arms, and yeah, OK. Maybe Rhodey had a point about the sleep thing. He couldn't really finish anything if his stupid _brain _wouldn't let him stick to the right language.__

He let Rhodey haul him upright and leaned heavily against Rhodey's arm as a jaw-cracking yawn rocked him on his feet.

'Дoбpoвeчep,' he muttered as Rhodey tripped him onto his bed, grinning at Rhodey's fond complaint before sinking into a deep and dreamless sleep.

****

He woke up to painfully-bright sunlight and a funky taste in his mouth that was compounded by the fact that Rhodey had let him fall asleep _right on top of _a pile of dirty laundry.__

'Urgh, gross,' Tony peeled a pair of boxers off his face, gagging as he realised he'd drooled all over them. 'Thanks, buddy.'

He glanced at the clock, and apparently he'd missed his allotted lab time for today. Great.

Well, if he was going to miss a day, he might as well enjoy it. Tony threw the laundry at the corner and repositioned himself on the bed, eeling his way up to lie with his head on the pillow.

Rhodey had threatened to destroy the Dr Pepper, but he hadn't said anything about the coffee. Tony stared at the ceiling for a while, weighing up the pros and cons of actually getting up to get some caffeine in his system or lazing around some more. Caffeine won, so he rolled upright, laughing at the head-spin before shuffling out into the apartment proper.

Rhodey was huddled behind a great wall of China-sized pile of textbooks, surrounded by chewed-up highlighters and loose leaf paper.

'Good mo-o-o-orning, campers!' Tony clapped his hands loudly, because study-tense Rhodey was hilarious when startled. 'Waging epic battle against Flinders' term paper, are we?'

Rhodey jumped, biting straight through his current highlighter and glared up at Tony. 'If I ask you to check my math, will you be not a total cock hole about it?'

'Sure,' Tony poured the coffee pot into a mug and set a fresh batch up. 'I'll even keep to the coursework math instead of improving your's and Flinders' lives with my epic genius.'

Rhodey sat back, leaning against the couch. 'So you're back to English, then? No more Yoda-ing it up?'

Tony flapped the hand not involved to cup-to-Tony coffee manoeuvres. 'You see how coherent you are after thirty hours of programming and six litres of Dr Pepper.'

'Yeah, no,' Rhodey laughed, setting down his pen and book and scrubbing his hands through his hair. 'I like to get at least three hours sleep a night. Does that happen often?'

'What?' Tony stepped over Rhodey's battlements and lay down on the couch.

'The code-switching thing,' Rhodey twisted, leaning an arm along Tony's side. 'Isn't that what it was? Using two languages interchangeably? Cuz it wasn't English syntax when you were actually using English words.'

Tony shrugged, resting the mostly-empty cup against his breast bone and closing his eyes. 'If you haven't noticed it before, it mustn't.'

Rhodey hummed and turned back to his paper. Tony let himself drift for a while.

He wasn't making as much progress as he'd hoped with the new operating system. He wanted something that was more secure than Microsoft's ludicrous netting of a system. Something that was inherently resistant to hacking and bugs.

'It was pretty cool,' Rhodey said offhand, tossing a couple of books towards the door with a sigh.

'Hmm?' Tony cracked one eye.

'The whole language blender thing you brain was doing,' Rhodey grinned at him. 'You're like a living Enigma machine.'

'Oh my God!' Tony shot upright, sending the dregs of his coffee flying over Rhodey and his books. 'That's it! Perfect!'

He grabbed Rhodey's face and planted a smacking kiss just above his eye and fled back to his room, ignoring the shouting.

If he built his operating system using a mish-mash of English and Macedonian...

Tony frowned at his keyboard, fingers pausing. No, to make it totally wicked he should throw in a few more languages. And take grammar from some completely different language...

Oh, this was going to be _brilliant _. Unusable by anyone else, but that was kind of the point.__

Tony grinned and started building his own language.

**Author's Note:**

> Дoбpoвeчep is Macedonian for 'good night'. Extra headcanon: Tony keeps saying random social niceties in Macedonian to Pepper and Rhodey so that he's _being _nice, but they can't call him on it :P__


End file.
